The Nord and the Four-Eared Khajiit, About 20 years after Martin's death, as crimes are spreading, a No Options

[sford564]

Okay, I already posted this on fanfiction.net, but I've revised it a little now. Soooo... here it is. It starts out a little dark and gets lighter as it goes.


Chapter 1: Fulfilling a Promise

The Nord made his way through the forest toward the traveling entertainers’ carts. There were all sorts of low lives of every race in this little gathering. Some of the scum wanted to see the bear baiting or to bet on the pit fights. Others wanted to buy slaves. Others still came to have sex with or buy some of the kidnapped girls the travelers had with them.

Sure, slavery was illegal, but it didn’t matter as long as you didn’t get caught. After Emperor Martin’s sacrifice, everyone’s attention was focused on cleaning their world up again from the Oblivion scum and rebuilding it again. Then, when things began to settle down, the talk of the new emperor exploded into several skirmishes, until most citizens didn’t care who ruled, as long as the deaths stopped. Now that the new High Chancellor took over rule, things were peaceful again for the moment. Alas, though, with all the strife that had taken place, the High Chancellor didn’t have enough time or man power to take care of every problem across the land, which meant that slavers began to rise up here and there in various parts of the world.


The Nord shivered a little and pulled the cloak further over his head so that no one could see him as he rode up to the camp. He had promised the dying Khajiit that he’d find her daughter, but he never expected to find her in a place like this. Still, though, he didn’t have as hard a time finding her as he had expected. It seemed that the sight of the four-eared half breed Khajiit made a lot of stir in every town she was brought to.

As soon as he entered the camp, he was surrounded by a group of dangerous looking men. “I’m looking for a Khajiit half-breed. Four ears,” he informed them.

“We have nothing like that here,” one of the men told him, not liking the looks of the Nord.

“Ahhh, so you’re the one asking around, are you?” another asked.

“What do you want, stranger?”

“I want to buy her,” the Nord answered.

“She’s not for sale!”

“She will be,” the Nord assured, slipping off his horse next to them. The vagabonds backed away a little, as the Nord towered over most of them. “Take me to her,” he demanded. No one moved.

The Nord slipped off his hood, and everyone backed away even more, horrified. There was no real face on the Nord; instead, there were two black eyes and two ears in a mass of scarred and torn flesh. He looked inhuman enough to be one of the Oblivion spawns he had hunted many years ago.

“Now,” the Nord growled. The group instantly spilt away from him and one vagabond, too scared to disobey, made his way through camp – nearly running to get away from the Nord – to where the Four-eared Khajiit was locked.

There was a small group of laughing, jeering people in front of the cage. They didn’t even notice as the Nord walked behind them.

This post has been edited by sford564: Sep 5 2010, 07:12 AM

[sford564]

Chapter 22: Troubled Sleep

The mage brought the Nord to a nice little room and gave him some wine and food. As he ate, a bath was prepared for him. As he bathed, a bed was made for him.

The Nord welcomed a chance to sleep and clear his head. Maybe when he woke up, he’d know what to do.

Sleep came very quickly, though it was not very relaxing. He kept seeing Mara in his dreams. First she was the Mages Guild leader, in her robes of state, tall and proud, and he knelt in front of her, offering her a little ring. Suddenly they were transported back in time to the traveler’s cage when he had first seen her. She stood in the little cage, looking down in horror at him, laughing and jeering people all around her.

“Marry me,” he again asked.

“No…no hurt poor Four Ears,” the noble Mage Leader begged, tears spilling from her eyes.

Again he asked her, this time more threateningly, as he walked outside her cage with a whip. Laughing and snickering came forward from the jeering audience.

“Why would she kiss something like that?” they asked. “He’s a monster,” another voice agreed. “Shhh... I think he’s waking up.” “Don’t worry, this will keep him asleep.”

The Nord felt a sharp bit of pain as more snickering and talking past through his mind, and suddenly he found himself at the altar in Hackdirt. The group of half-naked fanatics seemed to merge into well-dressed mages, and in front of him, towering over him with a boar tusk in her hand, was little Mara. She neither smiled nor frowned as she recited her ritual prayer.

He called out to her, begging her to stop, but she did not. She didn’t even hear his words. He tried to fight back, to run. He couldn’t. He couldn’t even move. She slowly brought the boar tusk down against his face, just under his eyes. He saw blood. He felt pain. He screamed and screamed, struggling to break free.

The mages stopped their work with great wonder as they saw their little leader run through their midst, an elderly mage following after her, calling out to her. The other mages followed the two. They ran to the barracks area, where they were met with a very odd sight: a huge, horrifically scarred Nord ran around the court yard, in a sleep trance with his eyes closed, screaming and crying with so much pain that it sounded as if his soul were being tortured in Oblivion. Two horrified young Mages stood back, afraid to go near him. They had obviously put whatever enchantment it was on him.

“What happened here?” their leader cried, her voice angry and panicked.

“I’m sorry,” was all that a young mage had for his defense.
“He’s a monster! Look at him!” was the other’s.

“What happened?” she again demanded. “What spell have you put him under?”

“It…it was just a joke. He was sleeping so we thought we’d scare him.”

“But we didn’t want him to get up and hurt us, so we…”

“We subdued him so he couldn’t move.”

“He broke through both of our spells, so we put him to sleep, but he’s breaking through that, too.”

“Help us!”

There was silence from the mages as Mara cast a spell on the Nord. His screaming and stumbling ceased as he lost momentary consciousness and lay on the ground.

Again Mara cast anther spell and this time the Nord opened his eyes. His breathing was heavy as he looked up at all the mages above him. Mara fell to her knees beside him, causing the Nord to instinctively cover his face.

Realizing that he was still panicked from whatever trance or spell they had put him in, she did not try to touch him.

The Nord, still covering his face, quickly slipped away from Mara and ran out of the courtyard, out of the mages’ complex and into the city.

He ran for such a long time that he didn’t even realize where he was going. He had made his way around the city several times before he paused by the city gate. But he didn’t want to leave just yet. Climbing from rooftop to rooftop until he found his and Mara’s old way of getting up onto the wall, he surveyed the sunset and scenery before him.

Reliving the horrors and pain of the Hackdirt ritual was too much for him, and he hid his face in his hands and cried bitter tears.

Yes it was just a dream, but it was worse when he thought that Mara – sweet little, scary Mara, half tamed and half feral Mara – would do something like that. When they first met, how many times had she threatened him? But she never took up her promise. And then before he had to leave her, how sweet had she been to him? How many times had she kissed him and told him that she loved him? How many times did she promise to marry him? Yet none of it was to be.

Fresh tears fell from his eyes. When he left for a month, she stayed up here on this very wall, every night until he came back. But then, when he left for a year, she did not spend one night waiting for him up there. She was willing to let him go. She was happy without him.
Wasn’t that what he had hoped for? Why did it cause him so much pain knowing that she was loved, respected and happy without him?

A selfish, evil side wanted to go back in time to when she was scared and socially inept, but his. What if he had, against everything he knew to be right, married her as she wanted? What if he had never taken her to the priests to be educated? She would be unhappy? Yes – no one but he would have loved her. They would have nowhere to go but Skyrim, which she hated. No matter how much joy it would be to have her, if she wasn’t happy, there was no point in anything else.

The Nord closed his eyes and let the salt water run through the many channels on his face, stinging his flesh.